Visual Plumes (for Windows 98/95/ME/XP/NT/2000)
Windows
v1.00
Aug. 2001
Yes (pdf)
USEPA

	
Visual Plumes is Windows software for simulating jets and plumes and for assisting in the preparation of mixing zone analyses, TMDLs, and other water quality applications.

  Visual Plumes (VP), is a Windows-based computer application that supersedes the DOS PLUMES (Baumgartner, Frick, and Roberts, 1994. Dilution models for effluent discharges, Third Edition. EPA/600/R-94/086) mixing zone modeling system. VP simulates single and merging submerged aquatic plumes in arbitrarily stratified ambient flow and buoyant surface discharges. Among its new features are graphics, time-series input files, user specified units, a conservative tidal background-pollutant build-up capability, a sensitivity analysis capability, and a multi-stressor pathogen decay model that predicts coliform bacteria mortality based on temperature, salinity, solar insolation, and water column light absorption.

VP includes the DKHW model based on UDKHDEN (Muellenhoff et al., 1985. Initial mixing characteristics of municipal ocean discharges. EPA/600/3-85/073a & b), the surface discharge model PDS (Davis, 1999. Fundamentals of environmental discharge modeling. CRC Press), the three-dimensional UM3 model based on UM, and the NRFIELD model based on RSB. These models may be run consecutively and compared graphically to help verify their performance. The Brooks equations are retained to simulate far-field behavior. Finally, DOS PLUMES may be selected as one of the "models," giving full access to its capabilities.


File Size Download
Important information for installing and using the Visual Plumes 34 KB
Visual Plumes installation file (self-extracting) 5.16 MB
Latest Visual Plumes Update (August 14, 2001) (self-extracting) 625 KB
Visual Plumes User Guide (in pdf format) 6.02 MB